Death in the Afternoon
by fleurs-du-mol
Summary: Post Cyberwoman. "Ianto sips the Death in the Afternoon and flicks a casual glance in that direction. He regrets his decision. Jack, leaning back in his chair, stares at him, blue eyes startling even in dim light. Without much consideration for the consequences, Ianto tips the delicate glass to his lips and doesn't stop drinking until the cocktail is gone."


A girl in the far corner of the club tries to send him another drink, but it's precluded by a different drink from someone else. The bartender passes Ianto a champagne glass full of bubbly crystalline liquid laced with something insidiously green.

"What is this?" asks Ianto, focusing on the blonde looking at him with shining eyes, back on the glass, and then on the bartender's unconcerned expression.

"It's called a 'Death in the Afternoon.'"

Ianto is not terribly enamoured with literature, but he's a fan of Hemingway. "Like the story?"

"I guess, mate," says the bartender with a shrug. Her red hair spirals down her shoulders.

"What's in it?"

"Champagne. Absinthe. Sugar cube."

"I'm a fan of anise." He finishes the first vodka tonic sent to him by the blonde, and reaches for the more elegant glass flute of the liquid promised to send him into oblivion. "Who sent it? Not blondie over there, surely. She doesn't look like she'd know what one of these is."

Sighing, the bartender, full of evident ennui, jerks her head at someone sitting at the far corner of the bar. "Rock Hudson. Dunno if he's your type or not."

Ianto sips the Death in the Afternoon and flicks a casual glance in that direction. He regrets his decision. Jack, leaning back in his chair, stares at him, blue eyes startling even in dim light. Without much consideration for the consequences, Ianto tips the delicate glass to his lips and doesn't stop drinking until the cocktail is gone.

Jack hides a smile; Ianto's resolve to ignore him drops with the slow tempo of the music seeping over from the dance floor. Although the captain has an unfinished drink, he catches Ianto's eye and moves to join him, leaving the glass behind.

"I certainly won't stop you, but you may want to slow down." The grin that spreads over Jack's handsome face makes Ianto's stomach drop in a way he's prepared for but is still unaccustomed to feeling. He gulps and fiddles with his own jacket, noticing that his boss has not changed out of his military duster. He did love Jack's coat.

"Are you buying, sir?"

Jack raises one debonair, dark eyebrow and smirks. "If you're drinking."

"Tomorrow's Saturday." Ianto lifts a corner of his mouth in wry encouragement and Jack gestures for another round.

"You haven't been in for days, anyway. I didn't _make_ you take any leave, you know."

The bartender fills two more glasses with the milky green liquid and glittering champagne, then pushes them toward the men.

"Did you know Hemingway, by chance, sir?"

"I may have been there when he invented this drink," says Jack, pursing his lips in a prohibitive way that Ianto finds inherently adorable.

"Oh, were you?"

The absinthe starts to hit with the sinuous, invasive force of a sedative. But it has the opposite effect, especially combined with two other mixed drinks, one beer, and no dinner. Lights take on a distinctive halo; Jack seems shadowed in a haze of red and violet. Welcoming it, Ianto smiles and sips.

"Maybe." Jack watches him. "How are you, by the way?"

"Could be worse, considering my ex-girlfriend recently transplanted her brain into another woman and then was gunned down by my coworkers."

"That's not what I meant. You've been here a lot."

There could be a tracker in his arm for all Ianto knows. But it's far more likely that Jack has just asked, or perhaps slept, around to better understand his recent drinking habits. This club is one of the least busy in Cardiff, and not very far from Ianto's flat. Staggering home is always a viable option, which is why he chose this place over the others that cater to the university. While Torchwood has had dealings here in the past, there haven't been any incidents for months.

"Concerned?"

Hurt and surprise shift across Jack's features. He pauses and visibly makes an effort to collect his thoughts. "Yeah, Ianto, I am."

"You didn't seem to be at the time."

"I also had the team's well being to watch out for," says Jack in a low voice, the predator's edge that Ianto knows so well surfacing for the first time since that night weeks ago. He tries stubbornly not to remember the burning of Jack's lips on his, or waking up to the vibrant, incessant sensation of Jack breathing air back into his lungs and taking more time than necessary to literally kiss him back to life. "Sorry if your finer feelings weren't quite as important to me as keeping you alive."

Instead of mentioning how much that kiss meant to him and asking why Jack turned CPR into a fantastic snog, Ianto laughs with a shade of sardonicism. "Of course they weren't. The great Jack Harkness, Captain, master of distancing himself from emotions, wouldn't care what a lowly tea boy was feeing. I know I shouldn't have lied. But you lot should have cared what I was getting up to, even down in the most forsaken vaults."

He levels more of the absinthe laced champagne down his throat, liking the way the sweet, antiseptic taste burns until it hits his stomach. He doesn't know why he's going out of his way to be hurtful. Admitting that his body and mind had responded to Jack was not a moral, or even logistical, problem. But it was troubling for someone who'd spent his preteen, pubescent, and then adult years glancing through magazines of naked ladies on heady afternoons, or dating exclusively women.

Then there was his father, whom Ianto had never mentioned to his coworkers. Men, he had to admit, seemed harsher than women when it came to relationships, or at least that's what he had seen growing up under the roof of a bitter, generally abusive dad. Jack might be nice now when he was simply flirting. But take things further than that, and Ianto would be in new territory emotionally and physically. Jack wasn't abusive, but that didn't mean he wasn't utterly alpha, in his way.

"I know," says Jack.

"Do you?"

"Yes," Jack says gently.

"It started before now," blurts out Ianto, watching the play of light on Jack's skin and wondering if it was the absinthe making him glimmer, or the lighting itself.

"Keeping Lisa in the basement?"

Ianto flinches. "That, yes, but I already told you everything about her. No, not that."

"What?"

Suddenly the bar feels much more crowded. Though they're the only two on this end, the ambient conversations seem louder, the temperature warmer. He has to shrug out of his jacket, put it on the back of his chair. It isn't a work blazer; it's actually like one of Owen's leather affairs, which is why Ianto has never worn it to the Hub. And if he came to work in casual wear, everyone would ask if he was feeling all right. Under the jacket he's not wearing a button-down shirt, only a t-shirt he got years ago at a Muse concert. Ianto rearranges himself, crossing his arms across his chest. There's a tiny fraction of the Death in the Afternoon left, but he leaves it for now.

"You, and—"

A shriek cuts across his words. Jack, his reaction time less fuzzy than Ianto's, looks in the direction of the sound.

"Welcome to Cardiff." Blinking over at Ianto, he quips, "How much you wanna bet that's not just garden variety sexual harassment?"

"I wouldn't," says Ianto, rising and discovering his muscles have gone to jelly. It would be quite a nice feeling, if he didn't have to go wrangle some alien or other. He sways, grinning at Jack with a considerable amount of lechery. The captain's smile falters, a small detail that Ianto files away for later examination.

Those ephemeral indications that he's not the only one feeling new things, little twitches of feelings that have been building for months, give him hope that he's not either crazy or engaged in some Freudian hero worship.

"Come on, then." Jack cuts a swathe through the busy dance floor, causing people to move by sheer mass and charisma. He never bandies Torchwood clout around unless he has to, and two security men have already made it to a young woman who is clearly in distress. She clutches at her neck with a panicked expression. Security restrains a lithe man with shadows under his eyes. The man, who doesn't seem to be fighting the restraint, perks up when he sees Ianto.

"What's the problem?" asks Jack.

He's the picture of affability, though he's had to raise his voice over Depeche Mode. The security guys must know him by sight, because both defer to his question and offer explanations. But the girl, already having proved her voice could carry, answers Jack directly.

"The sod bit me."

Ianto thinks that's a stupid reason for howling something fierce in the middle of a dance floor, but he keeps his opinion to himself. "He bit you."

The girl nods and, keeping one hand to her neck, smoothes her sequined black dress. Jack looks her over and Ianto starts to hedge, but he's all business about it. His eyes only linger on her neck.

"Show me," Jack says.

She reluctantly lets him move her hand away, and where Ianto expects a love bite there are two jagged puncture marks. They're not very deep, and they're not centered on her jugular. "I told you."

Jack gives her his best, most winning smile. "I believed you." As he turns to the man in question, his expression goes stony. "You should know better. Coming here and going after young girls— don't they have an age of consent on your planet?" He reaches into one of his pockets and passes the girl a minuscule white pill: the lowest dose of retcon. It will only make her forget a few hours at the most. She glances at it skeptically.

"I don't take pills from men in clubs," she says. There are strange little sparks of glitter in her hair. Though there could be actual glitter, Ianto doesn't think glitter can travel up hair strands.

"That's smart," Jack tells her. "But if I was going to slip you something, do you think I would do it in front of witnesses?" She gives him the suggestion of a smile. "I'm a doctor; it's a pain pill and mild relaxant. It'll calm you down." To the bouncer, he says, "Make sure she gets home safely, please. She might need stitches but it looks to be clotting."

Ianto can't help but admire the charm involved, the coaxing, and the studied, reassuring manipulation that no one but him noticed. The girl takes the pill without further protest, and one of the bouncers escorts her to the entrance of the club. The second bouncer still holds the biter, whatever he actually is, and looks to Jack and Ianto for instructions. "We got it," Ianto says, his voice full of unusual bravado. "Torchwood."

Jack gives him a look.

Then the bouncer starts to hand over the offending alien. In a feat of dexterity, the seemingly complicit being twists and goes for Jack, revealing barred, spiny teeth. Before anyone can intervene, Ianto has interposed himself with a yell, jerked a small hypodermic needle from his trouser pocket, snapped off the cover, and crammed it into the alien's exposed upper arm. Jack staggers back into a freestanding table. Within seconds, the alien slumps forward, unconscious.

"Thanks," says Ianto to the bouncer, who stares at the tableau. "You can go fend off drunks now." The burly man shakes his head and Ianto catches a muttered, 'bloody Torchwood' before he strides away.

Studying his employee, Jack wrests the alien into an upright position so that the two of them can get him out to the SUV. Well, assuming that's what Jack drove here. "You carry sedative in your pocket when you go to bars, Ianto?"

"Don't make it sound like that. I work for Torchwood; there's no telling when something Torchwood-y will happen. It's not like the aliens all get a memo telling them our nights off and they think, 'Oh, right, Ianto needs a night to himself, better not go to that club, then.' Please." He doesn't realize until a minute later that he and Jack have moved through the club and up the stairs to the front door.

"No, I'm glad you had it. Just because I can heal doesn't mean I wanted my neck to be savaged. And these guys are nasty," says Jack. He relays a species name that Ianto knows he wouldn't be able to say sober, let alone in the state he's in now. "It's how our vampire myths started, probably. If they get to you when their pheromones are going… oh, it's all over. Intense exsanguination. Though," Jack pants, unlocking the boot of the SUV, "I've been told the experience is purportedly orgasmic as all hell. So, there's that. I mean, if you're going to go, why not go that way?"

Ianto scowls at the idea and helps Jack heft the inert body inside. Upon losing the support from both Jack and the comatose alien, he finds himself wavering unsteadily. He is also, he discovers, wet. It's raining. "Fuck, I left my jacket inside."

Jack shuts everything up and grins at Ianto. "Want me to go in and get it?"

"No," he says after a moment, starting to laugh. "It looks too much like Owen's."

"Horror of horrors." Jack takes his hand and steers him into the passenger side of the SUV. "I should take you home; I can process this one. Tosh is still there, I think." Ianto clings to his grip as Jack settles him in the seat.

"Jack?"

"Hm?"

"Nothing," says Ianto. He likes the way Jack's hands linger warmly on his body, especially since he's wearing the t-shirt instead of a shirt, waistcoat, and jacket, and can almost feel the contact of palms on his skin. "I'm glad you were here tonight." Jack catches his eye, says nothing, shuts the door, and reappears in the driver's seat.

"I planned to make sure you weren't totally unhinged." They take off in the direction of Ianto's flat, and Ianto wishes the drive could be several hours longer than the two minutes it will take.

"Unhinged?"

"It's the ones who internalize everything into sarcastic quips and well-made coffee you have to look out for," says Jack, and although his tone is light, Ianto knows he's not joking. Instinctively, Ianto reaches for his unoccupied hand. Jack looks sidelong at him, startled, but laces their fingers together. He rubs his thumb on Ianto's palm.

"That night we caught Myfanwy."

It's out before Ianto can stop himself.

"What about it?"

"When you and I almost got impaled. I mean, it was obviously physical, you know, me being on top of you. But it was more than that. Since then. That's when it started. I felt guilty since I needed the Torchwood Three facilities to save Lisa. But Jack, I already knew I couldn't. I just wasn't ready not to try. I wasn't ready to let her die— or kill her. I knew she was gone, though. Then, what I wanted after that night was you. What was I supposed to say, though?" Jack glances over at him, slightly surprised. Ianto feels that it's imperative to explain himself. "This isn't because I'm drunk, either, but I'm sure it's probably helping." His voice drops. "God, I am ridiculous."

Silence stretches between them. Ianto starts to regret saying anything, but when he tries to pull his hand away, Jack won't let him. They've stopped at the curb in front of his flat. He clears his throat. When Jack continues to keep his thoughts to himself, Ianto slowly moves across the console— the world has lost some of the iridescence but everything still seems so fluid— and places a gentle, though not timid, kiss on his lips. While he may be in a reverie, the captain responds to that more than the deluge of Ianto's words, resting a hand on the side of his face and flicking his tongue into Ianto's mouth, along his teeth.

"If you weren't decidedly under the influence, I would ask how long that sedative lasts," says Jack, resting their foreheads together. "Where'd you get it, anyway?"

"Oh, it'll last hours. That archeological dig from months back. Owen figured out a way to replicate the—"

But Jack starts kissing him again.


End file.
